United States Commission on Civil Rights

Confidential Draft Report
“Enforcement of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968”

May 1990


Indian Civil Rights - Confidential Draft Report, p. 46
      Absent Congressional action to provide meaningful enforcement of the ICRA, it may be that the final paragraph of the Red Lake statement submitted for the Commission's record will provide the final word:

The Tribe deeply resents the intrusion by the United States Civil [R]ights Commission and the Congress into Red Lake affairs through the passage of the 1968 Civil Rights Act.  It is not that the Tribe does not provide fair government.  Rather, it does so because the Tribe has the governmental authority and responsibility to do so, not because of federal law.  The Tribe believes so deeply that the Congress lacks the power to pass laws intruding on its governmental authority that it comissioned a legal opinion analyzing the legality of the exercise by Congress of its so-called "plenary power."  The opinion concludes that the exercise of that power is without Constitutional basis.  A copy of the opnion is attached, and the Tribe requests that it be made a part of the record. [97]

     In a similar vein, the Tribal Council Resolution submitted for the Commisison's hearing record states:

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Red Lake Tribal Council does hereby go on record as opposing and objecting to nay attempt to enforce

__________
  97. Testimony of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Exhibit 18, printed as Exhibit 18, Washington, D.C. Hearing, supra note 4, at 321, 334-35.
< HOME >
 < INDEX >
 < NEXT >